> There also won’t be a ton of money changing hands as a passenger will pay the driver only a nominal fare for the trip
I'd hardly call it a Uber rival
This is Google's first toe-in-the-water for apps to request a ride, but it obviously won't be their last. Considering how much they've invested in autonomous vehicles only a crazy person would believe they're going to leave the entire market for self-driving taxis wide open for Uber etc. Google will have a taxi request service within a couple of years.
What makes you think it won't be their last? Google frequently puts their toes in the water and then decides it's too cold to swim. It's like, their modus operandi.
And the fact that it's cheaper is basically "disruption from below" - a proven strategy in many businesses. While this exact transport service model generally failed , it did succeed in France(blabla car), and Google has unique marketing advantages that might make it succeed elsewhere.
Also, the main competitive barrier for UBER is that many consumers have the habit of ordering transportation through it's app. If Google gets that , the rest is relatively easy.
I believe the business model you are referencing is generally known as "race to the bottom"[1]. FWIW, it typically is only a "proven strategy" for the business which can starve out everyone else.
They can absolutely price Uber and others out of the market on this if they felt like it.
[Edit: except you can set up rides the night before; see Haaretz link in my other comment.]
Google still holds 5% of Uber.
For commuting, I'd call it Uber's abandonment and Lyft's death.
> ...allows users to share rides to work and back
I'm not sure how many people take Uber to and from work every day. I'd imagine it doesn't contribute to the bulk of ridership, though.
Isn't this what Lyft does? I'm guessing Uber put some money in a reporter's pocket to submarine them in this article instead.
They've since dropped the pretense but a lot of the trappings remain.
Edit: Don't mean to sound like I'm "hatin' on" Lyft, just amused at the dance they have to go through to fend off busybodies.
[1] a term they still use against protest from journalists, and TBH, reasonable people
This is basically just a carpooling app, and is nowhere near a rival to Uber or Lyft.
Like all marketplaces, you are faced with the chicken and egg problem. The market place is supply constrained. There is demand for rides but not enough matching supply. People with cars much prefer to travel alone due the inconvenience of picking up others.
So, in order to get the drivers you need to give them a VERY convenient option. Someone that is along their route, that would not add more than 5-10 mins of extra commute time, this is also dependent on how long the total commute is. You also need to reach these drivers, without them searching for a solution. Which is insanely expensive since the cheap acquisition strategies do not work.
The best way to solve this IMHO is seeding the market with drivers (supply side). Once you have the scale to guarantee a ride in a specific area you open up ride-sharing.
* Uber is doing this by incentivizing drivers who want to make a profit.
* Google is uniquely positioned to do this as well, since they have the treasure trove of Wayze data
Frankly it would be trivial to ask Android users a question: "Are you interested in carpooling? [Y/N]" and then prompt them when the guy three doors down also answers yes.
"Google's Waze to launch worldwide carpooling pilot in Israel"
If the latter possibility is sometimes the true motive, even if it is done out of self interest, the result tends to be good for all of us (except for the monopolists themselves), because Google doesn't tend to be able to maintain a monopoly in any techs other than search and advertising.
One example of the benefits of this kind of competition is the advent of larger iPhones. If not for Google's Android and subsequent proliferation of large-sized phones that evolved out of customer demand, Apple might have ignored (or not been nearly as aware of) the demand for a larger iPhone.
1. https://www.gv.com/about 2. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds
It's not terribly surprising that some of these ventures are short-lived and half-baked; there's a reason they hadn't launched earlier. But once you've spent three goddamn years of your life on something, you might as well try a Hail Mary before the project is shut down.
That didn't happen in mobile. In fact iOS and Android made Microsoft's mobile efforts look silly.
People, in general, are xenophobic and like their culture to stay small and untainted. Eternal September happens everywhere. It doesn't mean that Google has to keep two separate mapping applications running. Waze didn't stop to think about their community when they sold the application to Google.
Google is a different kind of competitor.
What's the difference? Google's/Uber's/Lyft's imprimatur that your passenger is trustworthy? More surety of payment? If I want to take the risk, why won't cities let me give hitchhiker's rides for cash (or even credit card payments)?
Carpooling, on the other hand, is highly encouraged, even to the point where local governments create special infrastructure to encourage people to do it. Are hitchhiking and carpooling two sides of the same coin? Yeah, probably. Should we be more encouraging of hitchhikers? Again, I think so. But if you have a positive message "Look at all the cars we're taking off the road! We're helping people meet others in similar situations, who all want to commute together!" it sets you up for a very different interaction with the public and with governments than "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we could get people to hitchhike more?"
Every time you launch into something else, like this, I become a bit more convinced that commentators are right and you are slowly turning into Microsoft.
I get the sense that, internally, things are still significantly different than they are or ever were at Microsoft. But I become increasingly concerned about some encroaching "inevitable".
De-fuck Hangouts and your rats nest of "instant" products/services. Beat Verizon over the head until they actually update the Moto X that, at the time of purchase, you sold me. Stop launching the "next great thing" only to kill it 18 months later, over and over.
And as some have said, um, search? Give at least optional specific control back to the power users. And someone the other day raised the pertinent question of why it's not well-integrated into Hangouts.
I suppose RideWith is supposed to eventually overlap with your autonomous cars, or something. But I don't give a crap about the new, until the old and erstwhile reliable -- and so critical to so many -- starts working better, again.
Thanks.
P.S. Ok, that last paragraph is partially rhetoric. But, damnit, if I'm going to invest in your products -- in both dollars and time and effort -- I want some consistency, and an upward trend in features and usability. (See also Tim O'Reilly's recent comments about the -- cough -- "improved" interface in Contacts. (Pop-ups and clipped text -- really?))
5. New functionality - e.g. If you're going somewhere while using Google Maps for navigation and turn on "Carpool" mode, people can see your path and message you for a pick up. They pay you for partial journey via the app.
If Google is basically able to say hey - your neighbor down the block drives to within a 5 minute walk of your office, then this could be a really useful tool for this sort of networking.
Or maybe your personal self-driving car will inform you that there are people travelling your route that you can share fuel costs with.
The benefits of driver-less vehicles in terms of accidents and fatalities aside, consider for a moment just how under utilized the current transportation capacity is in this country. On average, even at peak drive times, what percentage of vehicles are actually being used? Just look down your street or at any parking lot you pass on your way into the office.
In order to get the convenience of not having to call a taxi which could then require a long wait every time we need to go somewhere, we take out loans for tens of thousands of dollars to own a vehicle that is all ours. We then pay to maintain the multi-ton machine, build custom paths and storage buildings on our homes just to store them, and everywhere we go large swatches of land are set aside just to give us temporary storage for our vehicles since we can't reasonably visit any location without this machine in tow.
In a reality where we must own a vehicle in order to move around quickly and easily, all of these things make perfect sense and are just a part of our lives so much so that we don't even think about them most of the time. This one "little" change can completely transform it all.
* For a baseline, let's use one party (generally a person or a couple) with a personal car. Traveling someplace creates P marginal greenhouse gasses (GHG), plus there is the fixed cost of manufacturing the car (but I have no idea how much that is).
* Uber and taxis net GHG emissions should be worst and greater than P: Your trip uses P but added to that is the GHG generated when the taxi/Uber car has no passenger and is 'cruising'. Also, I expect taxis/Uber cars are larger on average than personal cars, and thus less fuel efficient, because they need to fit several adults comfortably in the back. If you give up a personal car for Uber/taxis, then you get the manufacturing benefit.
* Car share services (e.g., ZipCar) should net less than P emissions, if you give up a personal car when you join. The car is parked when nobody is driving it, so the marginal cost of one trip is P. But it also eliminates the emissions created from manufacturing the car, whatever that is. EDIT: As hayksaakian points out below, this is the same as buying a used car.
* Google's RideWidth's net GHG emissions should be much less than P: For every added passenger, one less car is on the road emitting P.
* Public transit probably is second best. The marginal GHG emissions of the bus/train carrying your fat a-- on its normal route probably don't amount to much. On the other hand, it probably depends on the average passenger load of the vehicle -- certainly a train/bus with only you on it costs much more per passenger than P, but those fixed costs are spread over many more passengers than Uber/taxis.
* Best of all, of course, are biking or walking. Though has anyone calculated the GHG emissions of the human energy cycle, from growing the cattle feed to transport to refrigeration to cooking to human methane emissions?
Also not calculated are the effect your use of one service or another has on demand, driving up the number of Uber/taxi/busses, etc. on the road.
For one, dynamic routing for two or more people is always going to hurt the user experience. Imagine you're running late and your car re-routes to pick up another passenger - ugh!
Shared transportation for anything more than a neighbourhood trip should be professionally driven and to a schedule. That schedule can be dynamic as anything but must be solid and offer guarantees BEFORE the trip starts as to start point, route, etc.
Basically a very smart and discoverable bus.
I assume this is from the driver-as-employee lawsuits Uber is facing and Google wants to be safe.
Self Driving Cars/Taxis/Carpools that are subsidized by Google's ad business.
Compared to us buying a second car, this is incredibly cost-effective, and would be worth it at 3x the price. (Monthly cost of ownership of a used car in SF would be ~$1000/mo including parking spaces at work and home).
The only other cost-competitive option is MUNI, which is $2.25 each way (or less if you commit to a monthly pass, and/or pay using before-tax income). She does use MUNI occasionally, but there are no direct routes serving her commute, and it is often unreliable at commute times.
Ridesharing for commuters is not always some absurd luxury--it can be an economically sensible luxury :)
I can expense the way home if I work late enough.
It's cheaper than driving since I'd have to pay 320 a month for a parking space at work.
I probably should just take the train more.
I think I'll let your first statement stand, but in regards to the second. Uber has raised $5.9bn dollars, is doing ~2m rides per day, is in 300+ cities -- sure you can create a competing app, but the chances of meaningfulness are small if non existent.
As far as I know, there are only 196 countries in the world.
Why in the world would uber just give it away? No, no, why would they pay to give it away?
Even as a 5% investor, do they have such intimate data access?
Uber: Entering a market with disregard of rules established for that market.
It's like Shopping Express for me. Was AMAZING while it was free and I used it every week. Now I don't because the fee is in place. Since Amazon pantry is not a good fit for my needs either, I just do things like in ancient times and pick things up at the grocery store while I'm out running errands and spend a few more minutes.
Obviously, no one should restructure their life around the availability of this kind of service. I'm just saying that this feels like bandwagoning to me. I can't be the only one thinking that this isn't going to last long. Uber and Lyft will be in that business until they close up shop or are regulated out of a market.
If you're going to try a non-traditional taxi-type service, why go with Google over one of the existing players?
